Attorney General Reference No 140 of 2004

Unauthorised disclosure by a public servant of confidential information held for public purposes is a serious sentencing matter. Sentencing must reflect the breach of trust, the need to maintain public confidence in the security of official records, the extent of disclosure, and the actual or potential consequences for people whose privacy is betrayed.

Sentences nevertheless remain fact-specific. Mitigation, including voluntary cessation, delay, a guilty plea and a basis of plea limiting the offender’s intended consequences, may place a custodial sentence at the lower end of the proper range without making it unduly lenient.

The Attorney General referred, under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, a sentence imposed at Stafford Crown Court on an administrative officer employed by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency.

The offender pleaded guilty to misconduct in a public office. On two days he obtained the names and addresses of 13 vehicle keepers who had visited animal-breeding premises and passed the information to animal-rights activists. Some recipients were subsequently harassed and intimidated, although it was not established that the wider incidents in the locality resulted from this offender’s disclosures.

The sentencing judge imposed a custodial sentence. The central issue was whether that sentence was unduly lenient.

1. The reference was dismissed. The sentence was lenient, and at the lower end of the appropriate range, but it was not unduly lenient.

2. Unauthorised disclosure of confidential information held by public bodies is inherently serious. A public servant who discloses it breaches the confidence that citizens are entitled to place in official records. Modern technology increases both the amount of personal information available to public servants and the importance of protecting it.

3. The sentencing court should assess the extent of the disclosure and its consequences. The impact on each person whose privacy has been betrayed is a critical element of sentence. An offender will rarely be wholly unaware of possible consequences, even where the full consequences were not anticipated.

4. The court nevertheless had to distinguish between the serious wider events in the locality and the consequences attributable to the offender’s own conduct. There was no evidence that he caused those wider events. Had there been such evidence, different sentencing considerations would have applied.

5. The judge was entitled to give weight to the offender’s voluntary cessation of the conduct, the substantial delay before sentence, his guilty plea, and the unchallenged basis that he expected the information to facilitate only lawful protest. The comparison with Keyte did not dictate the result because the extent of criminality, mitigation and procedural circumstances differed. Cases of this kind are fact-specific.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): dismissed the Attorney General’s reference under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and left the sentence imposed at Stafford Crown Court undisturbed.

• Crown Court at Stafford: on 25 October 2004 imposed sentence following the offender’s guilty plea to misconduct in a public office.